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Abstract

Cloud computing allows us to solve problems of information on a global scale and of a full range of tasks. Cloud computing has many advantages, but the reliability of data protection is a major concern of provider-client, industry, and governmental regulation. These information systems must comply with existing standards and anticipate new standards of information security. The legal process must distinguish who is responsible for what within a dynamically changing infrastructure significantly different from traditional models. The authors first examine the models and substance of regulation as established by service-level agreements between cloud providers, their clients, and their clients' customers. The authors discuss industry self-regulation and government regulations regarding data protection, privacy, criminal and tort law, and intellectual property law complicated by the inherent cross-jurisdictional nature of cloud computing.

Definition Of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models. (Mell, 2011)

This encapsulation of essential characteristics serves to highlight the commercial and functional advantages of cloud services. The cloud’s services are always available on-demand with broad network access, a pooling of resources while elastically growing or shrinking as needed with measurement and monitoring of the services provided. Service model components are the software, platforms for applications and infrastructure options. Services may be keyed to individual organizations, communities, the general public or to various combinations of these entities.

Obligations and rights relating to cloud activities may vary with the roles of those affected by them. The primary parties would be the cloud provider, that provider's client and that client's customers and clients. Each would carry with them the respective rights and obligations given by whichever respective jurisdiction(s) oversee their activities, of which there may be several. These may be defined, created or limited by statute, case law and contract. Each primary party may have rights and obligations to the other parties, as seen in Figure 1.